Evidence & Faith

Bulletin

Dan Peters
10/16/22 - Evidence-Based Faith

Jesus expects us to reason from evidence. If you don’t look at the evidence, ignore the evidence, turn away from it, you will not have the saving faith. On the other hand, the more you carefully examine the evidence, the stronger your faith will be in Jesus himself. “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.” (Rom. 10:17). When you actually pick up the Bible and begin to read it for yourself, you see that God knew the future. Only God can know the future. God has talked about the future so many times, he knows it forwards and backwards.
The messiah would be born in “Bethlehem… of Judah” (Micah 5:2). Micah is a Jew writing about 700 years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem. The exact Bethlehem that was in the territory in Judea, not the Bethlehem of Zebulun (Joshua 19:10-15). Joe Biden is our 46th President. If the United States is around 700 years from now, what town will the 300th president be born in? You would have to know the future. The future would not be mystery, but fact. God knows the facts of the future and it was recorded in another religion and in another language. That religion does not accept that Jesus is their messiah. But this rejection by his own people was not a mystery to God either. The rejection of Jesus is clearly seen in Isaiah, another Jewish book for the Jewish religion. Isaiah foretold of the rejection of Jesus, his death, his burial, and his resurrection in his 53rd chapter.
1. Rejection: “He was despised and forsaken of men, ” 53:3
2. Death & burial: “His grave was assigned with wicked men” 53:9. (The two other men on crosses that day were criminals.)
3. Reason of death: “But He was pierced through for our transgressions, ” (53:5).
4. Resurrection “Therefore, I will allot Him a portion with the great, And He will divide the booty with the strong; Because He poured out Himself to death, ” (53:12). That would be like saying, “I will give you a trillion dollars, and you can divide that out to anyone you want… after your dead”. But Jesus is not passing out money after he dies, but eternal life. How can God know all this 700 years before it happened? The future is not a mystery to God, but a fact. Jesus calls you to repeat what he did. Yes. Die to evil. Be buried in water (Baptism). Come up from the water having been born again, born from heaven to do God’s will - not your own will. Yes, that’s like throwing away your life, but that is exactly what he did when he died for you. He suffered for you because he loves you so very very much. He loved you too much, it killed him. But he loves you still. Pure and Holy is he, no one is like him. Let us serve him. Dan Peters